


And If They Fall

by Anonymous



Category: Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angels, Community: makinghugospin, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-25
Updated: 2013-03-25
Packaged: 2017-12-06 10:38:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 701
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/734721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kinkmeme prompt: fallen angel.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And If They Fall

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: "Androgynously beautiful, morally upright, chaste Enjolras is a fallen angel. He couldn't stand watching humans suffer from above without interfering, so he sacrificed his status as an angel and became one of them. He has a hard time adjusting to the loss of the most of his powers and to the carnality of human life."

The nights are the worst.  
  
I sleep, because if I'm going to wear a human body I might as well take it up all the way. They can lose all connections to the physical world, but instead devise other torments for themselves. Dreams of things that are impossible, two worlds crashing into one, melodies that cannot be and voices too shrill to make sense of them. Bloodshed and death all around me--of course that is not the hardest to bear, I have watched that from afar for longer than time itself. But the pleading eyes of those who looked to me. Thought I was supposed to do better.  
  
Of course, I probably was.  
  
I asked for this, I tell myself for the dozenth time one day when the others have cleared out of the bar. Humans. Devising slow-acting poisons to take advantage of these flimsy lives. Better that I'd jump than fall.  
  
I'd planned it out exactly right. Paris, 1830some years after the birth of Christ (plus or minus seven; you didn't get that business about the star down perfectly, but never mind that--it's hard enough not blurting out the details of a grand unified theory to Combeferre). I was a rich man, an attractive one, although I'd forgotten how much importance humans set on sexual dimorphism. This might have been a drafting error. But of all the times and places I could have chosen, this was one where I wouldn't be tempted to overshoot my grasp, but I had just enough resources to begin changing things for the better.  
  
Or so I thought.  
  
Oh, I didn't get caught  _up_  in their momentary fervors. Goodness no. Indeed it is still a struggle to play along sometimes, pretend I care about them. All the good gifts they could require, and they turn them into something perverted. Love and companionship are traded for physical lusts, nourishment and sustenance for these mind-addling concoctions, education and progress for schools that will train lawyers to beggar the poor, honest labor for prison gangs, a roof over the head for broken-down furniture, fit only to build fortresses of death.  
  
And I am grateful for all the powers I still possess. Literacy is a pleasure, the earnestness of my comrades a joy. Though they do not quite offset the memories from what has come before. Visions of the Earth as it soars through space, weapons of fire at my side as I lash out for justice--these are not easily forgotten.  
  
I suppose my rank, too, will be gone once I rejoin my fellows. Not that it matters, now that I am fighting for the levelling of earthly society, but it sickens me to imagine returning as something corrupted. It was my own free choice to walk amid the world, for a time, but who knows if they are not already rubbing off on me? Their fear, their shortsightedness, their distaste for mercy--too often already I have had to check myself when speaking too passionately. I tell myself it is so I do not disclose too much. But perhaps I already see what I might yet become. Fallen, indeed.  
  
And what if I am too twisted to be content without these merry, unruly, brash, blasphemous (at times, they don't know any better) humans? It is not like we will be confined to separate spheres, once we fall--and we grow too fervent, the day cannot be long now. For me alone will death be a return to glory. Bliss aside, what if they resent me from cutting their lives off too short?  
  
These are not the questions I should be fearing, when the abased still starve and perish. But when they come chirping about their carousing this or their lovers that--well.  
  
Of all of them, I think I pity Grantaire the most. How I want to inspire him, to urge him on to the noble sacrifices I know he is capable of! But I cannot get through to his human concerns--when he looks at me, he does not bother to dream, because to him I seem a model too inhuman to aspire to.  
  
And, of course, I cannot tell him that he's right.


End file.
